UK regulator Ofcom allowed the operator to refarm its 1800MHz spectrum for early LTE services, and today has switched on LTE in London, Bristol, Cardiff and Birmingham for testing, in readiness for customer launch “in the coming weeks.”

Their LTE network is expected to cover a third of the UK population in 2012 (over 20 million people), with 2013 population coverage to reach 70 percent, and 98 percent in 2014. The 16 cities to be connected by the end of this year are London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Derby, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Southampton.

The carrier’s initial LTE smartphones will include Samsung’s Galaxy SIII, the new Nokia Lumia 920 and 820 handsets, the HTC One XL and Huawei’s Ascend P1. A new iPhone-5 may be added to this list should Apple announce support tomorrow for the 1800MHz band.

A corresponding fixed-line fiber broadband service will be available to 11 million households and businesses by the end of the year, reaching two-thirds of the population by the end of 2014. The high speed fiber service is under a wholesale agreement with BT.